GAYLETTER

For a little dose of fun on the web, we take a look at comic strip, Out & About. Written and illustrated by Brazilian Kris Barz, who came up with the idea when he realized there wasn’t enough comics that gave fair representation to the LGBTQ community. Originally created in Portuguese, with the name “Torta de Climão,” it translates brilliantly as “Big Climate Pie” and Kris hopes to continue expanding on the issues raised in his work to add to this big ‘ol pie of queerness.

Here is what Kris had to say about his work: “With my work I try to humanize the LGBTQ community as much as possible in the form of comics, telling stories that show many different aspects of my characters, touching some important issues but always with the goal of creating fun and entertaining situations.”

Out & About may be fun on the exterior, but it has a big heart offering identity to people from every background. And fear not of reading them too quickly, Kris is still translating his works so he’s got plenty to keep you entertained!

Check it out here. …

I come from a pretty stereotypically homosexual background. I have no problem admitting I was in choir in high school. Why would I deny that? Performing and making people smile is cunt. Every Christmas season we would bus out to a center for the elderly and sing them Christmas tunes. I remember in two instances the same woman in the back of the room spent the entirety of our performances sobbing tears of joy (We checked to make sure we hadn’t triggered something awful). Were we that good? Probably not. But I think music and youth evoked something in her that only made itself apparent once in a while. Nevertheless, watching her cry while we sang “Holly Jolly Christmas” was unusual, to say the least. But each year all of us left the performance feeling uplifted — like maybe what we were doing mattered.

This is why people like Little Rickey are so refreshing to see. Rickey Josey, or Little Rickey, is a singer, dancer and all around performer based out of the greater Atlanta, Georgia area who is known for entertaining the elderly. For Rickey, performing is more than just aesthetics. “I don’t get hung up on if, you know, I mess up, or I didn’t get that quite right. That’s not all I am! I am doing all of it. The look, the dancing, the singing, and being nice to people — which don’t cost you nothing! This lady told me once when I was singing at the Underground — ‘Rickey, Rickey, Rickey. …

If you are headed home for the holidays and really want to impress your Mom with your new found love for cooking classic Italian dishes, look no further! She’ll be so happy you’ve introduced her to Adrian De Berardinis’ new Youtube show, The Bear-Naked Chef. He’s hunky, topless, and talented! Just make sure you tell her you really are interested in his cooking, and not just his ass which makes an on-screen cameos every time he turns to check the chicken.

 
Premiering just yesterday, De Berardinis’ show is “a new and innovative cooking web-series that features Adrian De Berardinis cooking good food, naked….why not?” Why not is right. “Recipes include a range of easy-to-cook, accessible food from Italy and beyond,” and for Episode 1 he prepares a Chicken Cacciatore that looks just as good as his chest. (I swear I was interested in the food too, but I am a millennial and easily distracted.)

He told Towleroad “I’m at a juncture in my life where I am fearless about most everything. I am comfortable in my skin and it took me a long time to arrive at this place. My experience has brought me to this point of wanting to share who I am with the world, ‘exposed and un-cut’ as well as my cooking. I have a voice that wants to be heard. My cooking is my art, and I want to share it in my own way, in my own language. Why naked? …

The only reason I’m recommending this hot mess of a “docu-series,” that premiered in May of this year on Showtime, is because it features so many god damn people I know and so many bars I’ve spent many drunken nights in. 3AM tries to appear “real” but is noticeably not. It follows the lives of 5 New York nightlife personalities including an escort, club doorman, deejay, party photographer and social media personality named Josh, who you might know as the Fat Jew. The character I was most interested in was Markus (pictured), the doorman who’s thrown shade my way many-a-times when he worked at Westgay at Westway. Markus, as I learned from the show, is trying to make his name as a stand-up comedian. He is probably the most entertaining character, the others (beside the deejay and escort) range from obnoxious to out-right disgusting.

I loved watching the obviously scripted scenes featuring Markus and a few GAYLETTER regulars. At one point he’s seen picking up, and making out, with Max Ryder at a Chelsea bar, which I can promise you was strictly for the cameras. Our friend Eric Worsech is also in many scenes as Markus on-again-off-again love interest. Eric is an exhibitionist in the most wonderful way so I got such a kick out of watching him act out for the cameras. There’s plenty of great TV on at the moment, so I’m not suggesting for a second you put this show before any of your favorites, however if you find yourself one rainy Sunday afternoon with nothing to watch, give 3AM a shot, just fast forward the scenes with the Fat Jew, he’s exhausting. …

In light of Justin Bieber’s vacation nudity, this is a post centered around flaccid dick. I love a soft penis. Some guys are totally insecure about having their flaccid member be seen in the morning after one too many bumps the night before, but some of us (me) like a good lookin’ softy. Not surprisingly, someone has dedicated an entire Tumblr to soft-dick storytelling. This is a whole new kind of graphic narrative. Things My Dick Does is prefaced with, “I’ve always wondered what my dick does in the times he is up before I am. He must get so bored waiting for me to wake up. Happens EVERY day. Poor little guy.” Ok, I knew the Internet was amazing, but not this amazing.

The blog features this guy’s dick in various positions. Baking, reading, hugging a stuffed animal (kudos on the miniature arms), wearing a Batman mask… I mean, the more you scroll down, the more this penis character blows your mind. One of the best staged photos features cum. That’s all I’ll say. The art direction on this blog is bananas and I’m highly interested in a gallery show. The blog features erect penis too, duh.

Please take a look. …

Merrie Cherry is the bomb. Every single time I see her perform or interact with her socially she never disappoints, she always looks fresh, is super energetic and sharp as a tack. As we are Facebook friends I follow most of Merrie’s activities on the scene and just happened upon one of her posts about a very exciting new web series she is part of that premiered this past weekend on Youtube. It’s called “Queens of Kings” it follows some fierce drag queens through the course of their day; out of drag, then as they transition into full-on hair and make-up, and then out at night to see what they get up or into.

Each episode is only five minutes long, so whatever the queens are going to do they better do it on point and quickly. The trailer I saw immediately pulled me, or rather it dragged me in, and I can’t wait to see the first show AND attend the premiere party if there is one. We managed to ask Merrie a few questions about the show and how it all came about.

Is it just a camerman and a soundman? The crew is small. Director Nicolas Heller and Producer Evan Zampella are the masterminds behind this.

 
Are there any producers “building” storylines? It is all legit. I told them from the beginning that I didn’t want to be apart of that fake world of “reality” television. No redo, if you got it, great. If you didn’t, lets move on. …

There’s a lot of things we can be proud of as a gay community — we are pushing through marriage equality in states we never dreamed of, we put together the best yearly parties and street parades in every major city around the world — hell, we are pretty damn organized. But when it comes to global warming, a quick Google search for “gays for climate change” will tell you we have fallen well behind on the issue.

That’s where two environmentally-minded gay New Yorkers and a hashtag come in. Save The Straights is a tongue-in-cheek initiative launched this Pride, to help the straight community out of the serious mess they’ve gotten themself into (because statistically speaking, we really can’t have contributed more than 10% or so to global warming). Honey think about our lobbying and fighting that helped create accessible HIV treatments in the late 80s — when has the straight community ever achieved anything like that? We don’t shy away from the tough fights. They need our help, and let’s be honest — we’d rather not suffer the same unfabulous doom of climate change with them.

To help launch the campaign you can snap a picture of yourself holding a message or meme and post it using the hashtag #savethestraights. For more info and to see the #savethestraights selfies, check out their website. …

There’s something about gay men and comics. From the 1950s “Batman” issue that has him in bed with another man, to Tom of Finland, to Mikey and Justin’s ‘Rage’ creation in Queer as Folk — illustrated depictions of sexuality, heroes and ‘outsiders’ have struck a chord with LGBT folks and zealous queer theorists for years.

One of the best gay cartoons online today is cartoonist C.Edwards‘ 12-Inch Roommate — a hilariously sexual and very NSFW series that is due to end this year. Created as a parody of 80’s sitcoms like Three’s Company, each strip revolves around two gay friends who are forced to hide their hunky roommate from their landlord, who prohibits well-endowed tenants in his building (don’t you hate when that happens?).

C. Edwards has now collected all 422 strips of his cartoon into one anthology entitled Attack of the 12-Inch Roommate. There’s a pre-order special happening now through Kickstarter, so jump on and check out how you can support this artist and secure your very own copy before it’s gone. …

“Why have so many younger queer men turned their backs on larger HIV/AIDS histories?”

It’s a frank question that is as complex as it is simple. Is it entitlement? Erasure? Plain ignorance? The question also happens to be one that Brooklyn writer Kyle Bella asked himself when he began work on his latest project, Viral Legacies. Looking to explore the histories of HIV/AIDS in New York, Berlin, Barcelona, and London, Bella is examining the epidemic through a contemporary gaze, questioning what modern gay experiences with the crisis are like and how the social and cultural grief from the initial outbreak are still very much impacting the lives of queer men today.

Bella is currently crowd sourcing for the project, which will take the form of writings that “blur the lines between fact and fiction” as they discuss the unwritten histories of HIV/AIDS in different parts of the globe. By traveling through Europe, Bella hopes to speak to young men like himself in order to capture the effect globalization has had on the ongoing crisis so that we, as queer people, can create better strategies for discussing sexuality and safety. He’s also making an admirable effort to “gather art, film, and written representations from artists who have died because of AIDS” in these European cities as well. Although controversial, Bella’s candor and enthusiasm in addressing the seemingly willful ignorance of young queer men about a crisis that still infects roughly 50,000 people per year in the US alone should give us all a great deal of hope for the future. …